Academic literature on the topic 'Public service bargains'

Über die Auswirkungen des sogenannten New Public Managements auf das Personal des öffentlichen Sektors ist bereits vieles gesagt worden. In diesem Beitrag wird in diesem Zusammenhang die „Public Service Bargain“-Perspektive verwendet, welche die Bedeutung von gegenseitigen Erwartungen und Verpflichtungen zwischen öffentlichem Personal und dem gesamten politischen System in den Mittelpunkt rückt. Aus dieser Sichtweise werden die etablierten Kernaussagen zum deutsch-britischen Reformvergleich mit dem Ergebnis überprüft, dass viele bisherige Stereotype revidiert werden müssen. Dabei geht der Beitrag in vier Schritten vor: Erstens werden die überlieferten Sichtweisen zu den deutschen und britischen Reformerfahrungen im Bereich des öffentlichen Dienstes dargestellt. Zweitens wird die Perspektive der Public Service Bargains präsentiert, bevor sich, drittens, eine vergleichende Analyse der beiden Staaten anschließt. Auf diese Ergebnisse gegründet, wird abschließend der Mehrwert dieser Perspektive erörtert, den die Public Service Bargains für das Verständnis aktuelle Reformen und künftiger Entwicklungen beitragen.

The article explores why apolitical public sector managers decide to or are forced to leave the civil service in the example of the Estonian Senior Civil Service. The article shows that the concept of public service bargain can help to understand and systematise the causes of leaving the Senior Civil Service. It is particularly useful in distinguishing between voluntary and involuntary turnover and in linking the turnover with political–administrative relations and loyalty issues. Since public service bargain does not specifically focus on voluntary exit, other approaches known from management literature are relevant for the operationalisation of voluntary turnover and complementing the public service bargain-based model for researching turnover of top executives. The empirical study maps the people who left the Estonian Senior Civil Service in 2009–2013 and analyses and systematises various causes of their departure on the basis of semi-structured interviews (70% response rate). The empirical study shows that the turnover of top executives can be considerable even without much direct political influence. It is found that job insecurity combined with the domination of individual unwritten public service bargains tends to lead to ambiguity in the perception of the roles of top executives, which in turn causes conflicts and dissatisfaction, materialising in high voluntary turnover.

The perspective of Public Service Bargains has been used to analyze the relationships between politicians and senior civil servants based on the premise of stable expectations about the roles of both parties. Changing governance arrangements and leadership changes, however, may destabilize and increase ambiguity about these expectations. Hong Kong provides a case of changing governance arrangements that has destabilized the roles of senior civil servants, providing them with new opportunities to slide back and forth between administrative and political roles. We discuss the case of Hong Kong, analyzing the move from a colonial trustee-type bargain to an agency-type bargain. The case study provides new insights into the applicability of the PSB concept in conditions of changing governance arrangements and unstable political and administrative roles. Points for practitioners The roles of politicians and civil servants may be less stable than is sometimes assumed. Changing governance structures may also upset these relationships, leading to contests for power and instability.

The agreements between the Australian senior public service and the political executive have undergone several shifts during the reform era of the last thirty years. These have involved fundamental redefinitions of the role, responsibilities, identity and autonomy of the senior public servant.There has been a succession of challenges to the relationship focusing on the role and status of the public service on the one hand and the behaviour and resources of the political executive on the other. Over time the trend has been towards strengthening the political executive, but punctuated by debates about issues that slowed the rate of change and contained political pressures on the public service. This process has produced clarifications of central aspects of the relationship and a clearer articulation of the range of roles provided by departmental secretaries. The article examines the evolution of public service bargains centred on the changing roles of the secretaries of departments of state, and analyses the implications of the changing relationship for the role and functioning of the public service in governance and public policy. Points for practitioners The article addresses how the roles of departmental secretaries in Australia have varied in significance during the reform era. A new arrangement has now emerged which clearly articulates the roles and codifies them. One of the roles, stewardship, recognizes that secretaries have a part to play independently of ministers.

One the largest cases of kleptocracy is attributed to the 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) scandal involving the former Malaysian Prime Minister, Najib Razak. As a result of the pressure to pay the debt, Najib signed multiple inflated infrastructure loans from China in 2016. This study analyses the manipulation of Public Service Bargains as a critical variable influencing the foreign loan decision-making of the kleptocrat leader. It concludes that Najib's manipulation strategies transformed the established Trustee-type to kleptocratic-type bargains in Malaysia's foreign loan decision-making process. The post-Najib's restoration of Trustee-type bargains under the new Malaysian government, followed by a series of successful renegotiations with China, attest to the significance of the Public Service Bargains system on the foreign loan decision-making process. This analysis also contributes to the wider discussion on the critical side of China's Belt and Road Initiative amidst a global call for good governance.

Cette thèse présente l’évolution temporelle du lien entre les variables politiques et la mobilité des élites administratives dans la fonction publique provinciale au Canada. Considérant la relation entre le gouvernement et l’administration comme une relation mandant-mandataire (principal-agent), la littérature en administration publique décrit l'influence de diverses dynamiques politiques – par exemple un changement de parti au pouvoir – sur le degré d’intervention des gouvernements dans la dotation du personnel administratif. S’appuyant sur la notion de marché bureaucratique (Public Service Bargain) de Hood et Lodge (2006), la présente thèse estime que la relation entre les dynamiques politiques et la mobilité des fonctionnaires s’inscrit dans un contexte sociohistorique. Plutôt que de percevoir l’ensemble des relations politico-administratives comme présentant les caractéristiques de la théorie mandant-mandataire, avec de nombreux conflits pour l’atteinte des objectifs et une grande asymétrie des informations, cette thèse suggère que la mesure dans laquelle diverses dynamiques politiques poussent les gouvernements à procéder à des mises à pied ou à des nominations stratégiques varie avec le temps, en suivant les changements dans ce qui entoure les relations politico-administratives. Les statistiques descriptives et la régression logistique sont principalement utilisées pour analyser l’association entre les variables politiques et la mobilité, à l’aide d’une base de données originale repostant des changements de sous-ministres dans la fonction publique provinciale au Canada de 1920 à 2013. Les résultats empiriques permettent de conclure que l’influence des dynamiques politiques sur la mobilité des fonctionnaires varie en fonction des différents marchés bureaucratiques. Avant la mise en place d’une fonction publique professionnelle, où les relations politico-administratives s’inscrivaient dans un spoils bargain, les changements de gouvernement entraînaient une importante rotation des fonctionnaires. Cette pratique est conforme à un marché bureaucratique où les critères de compétences des fonctionnaires sont indéfinis, et où les fonctionnaires sont loyaux au parti au pouvoir. Dès la fin de la Deuxième Guerre mondiale, jusqu’aux années 1980, l’association entre les dynamiques politiques et la mobilité diminue grandement. Cette pratique correspond au marché bureaucratique de Schaffer (Schafferian bargain), où les gouvernements favorisent la connaissance technique des politiques et la bonne volonté des fonctionnaires à donner des conseils avisés aux membres du gouvernement, peu importe le parti au pouvoir. Dès les années 1980, les dynamiques politiques sont de nouveau associées à la mobilité. Or, non seulement les changements de parti, mais également l’élection de nouveaux chefs à la tête de ceux-ci entraînent une plus grande mobilité. Cette pratique va dans le sens du managerial bargain, où les nominations sont utilisées pour encourager l’allégeance à l’agenda gouvernemental et la compétence est comprise comme étant la bonne gestion du personnel et des ressources dans le but de répondre aux directives du gouvernement. Étudiant les actions stratégiques des gouvernements dans leur contexte sociohistorique, cette étude contribue de manière originale à l’administration publique et à la politique canadienne, en démontrant que les dynamiques politiques jouent un rôle quant à la mobilité des fonctionnaires, bien que la nature de ces dynamiques et l’étendue de leurs effets varient selon les époques, qui présentent des marchés bureaucratiques distincts.
This dissertation studies temporal variances in the relationship between political variables and the mobility of administrative elites in Canada’s provincial bureaucracies. Conceptualizing the association between the government and the bureaucracy as a principal-agent relationship, research in public administration has identified how various political dynamics – such as a transition in the governing party – affects the extent to which governments interfere in the staffing of bureaucratic personnel; removing incumbents and replacing them with persons who are believed to be loyal to government’s policy agenda. This dissertation contributes to this literature by identifying the historical contingencies with which political dynamics effect mobility. Drawing upon Hood and Lodge’s (2006) concept of a Public Service Bargain (PSB), the relationship between political dynamics and mobility is situated within a more precise social-historical context. Rather than approaching political-administrative relationships as universally reflecting the specifications of principal-agent theory – exhibiting a high incidence of goal conflict and information asymmetry – this work claims that the extent to which political dynamics prod governments to strategically dismiss and appoint personnel has varied over time, in tandem with shifts in the contours of political-administrative relationships; specifically, the nature of the bureaucracy’s competency and its loyalty. Primarily using descriptive statistics and logistic regression the association between political variables and mobility is tested with an original dataset of deputy minister turnover in Canada’s provincial bureaucracies between 1920 and 2013. Overall, the empirical evidence supports the conclusion that the effect that political dynamics have on bureaucratic mobility has varied over time across distinct PSBs. Prior to the development of the modern professional bureaucracy, where political-administrative relationships reflected a spoils bargain, transitions in the governing party resulted in increased mobility. Such actions are congruent with a PSB where the nature of governance is of a minimal character; there are no specifications concerning the bureaucracy’s competency; and the bureaucracy’s loyalty is of a partisan nature towards the governing party. Starting in the postwar period and lasting until the 1980s, the association between political dynamics and mobility is significantly reduced. Such is congruent with a Schafferian bargain where governments encourage technical knowledge of policies and a willingness amongst bureaucrats to provide frank counsel to government office holders, regardless of the party in power. Starting in the 1980s however, political dynamics are once again positively associated with mobility. Yet now, not only transitions in party, but all newly elected heads of government lead to increased mobility. This is consistent with a managerial bargain where appointments are used to encourage loyalty to the government’s policy agenda and competency is understood as the ability to manage personnel and resources to realizing the directives dictated by the government. Situating the strategic actions of governments within their social-historical context, this work makes original contributions to the fields of public administration and Canadian politics by showing that when it comes to bureaucratic mobility, political dynamics matter; but which dynamics, and the extent of their effects, vary over time across distinct PSBs.

II n'existe plus de grève dans les services publics sans que soit evoqué, voire réclamé ou exigé le service minimum. Le droit français n'offre qu'une législation très parcellaire et floue en la matière. Malgré de nombreuses propositions de loi, le législateur fait preuve d'inertie. Cette attitude s'explique notamment par la grande difficulté technique de la tâche imposant de concilier les deux principes de valeur constitutionnelle que sont le droit de grève et la continuité des services publics. Cette étude tend a mettre en exergue les interrogations relatives au service minimum et s'efforce de déceler la solution qui serait la mieux adaptée dans le système juridique français. Afin de donner plus de relief à la recherche, le choix a été fait de l'aborder en s'inspirant du droit étranger. Le modèle choisi est originaire du Canada, et plus exactement du Québec. II bénéficie d'un recul d'une vingtaine d'années et offre de ce fait, une expérience riche d'enseignements. La création d'un service minimum applicable aux services publics exige une analyse tant de la notion que de sa mise en ceuvre. Concrètement, iI s'agit d'identifier les fondements du service minimum, de délimiter son champ d'application mais aussi de le définir en termes qualitatif et quantitatif, d'envisager sa mise en ceuvre par la voie négociée avec des acteurs spécifiques et de présenter les moyens permettant d'assurer son effectivité.
Every public sector strike brings up the question of a need for a skeleton service. In this area French law is extremely fragmentary and vague. In spite of numerous attempts to introduce legislation no law has been voted. The main reason has been the considerable technical difficulty in reconciling the two basic constitutional principles ofthe right to strike and the continuity of public services. This study brings into focus the problems and questions arising from the idea of a skeleton service and attempts to identify the most practical solution in the context of French law. To give clearer defmition to the study, the Quebec legislation in this field was used as a model. It has been in force for twenty years and this offers many practical lessons. Setting up a skeleton service in the public sector has to be based on an accurate definition of the notion itself as well as its concrete application. Its underlying principles and field of application have to be defined. Qualitative and quantitative aspects, bargain procedures and partners, necessary resources, all have to be identified.
"Thèse présentée à la Faculté des études supérieures en vue de l'obtention du grade de Docteur en droit (L.L.D)"